By Silalei Shani
With 7 seconds remaining on the clock in the fourth quarter and one point down, the Kenyan men’s basketball team, the Morans, made the right decision – get the ball into the hands of Tylor Okari Ongwae. It took Okari one pump fake to get his defender in the air and to open a window, not just to the rim but also to a dream. He got off the shot, bringing every Kenyan watching that game, anywhere in the world, to their feet. Final score, 74-73 to Kenya.
This was a moment that Kenyan basketball fans will savour a long, long time. Not only did Kenya punch their ticket to the Afrobasket tournament for the first time since 1993, they also toppled Africa’s basketball giant, Angola. If all that wasn’t enough, Kenya was led by the first female head basketball coach of an African men’s national team, in Liz Mills. Mills is worth a feature story all of her own (see my interview with her, here).
Kenya’s basketball national teams have had a cloudy history. The talent has always been there but the key pieces haven’t. I would know, having given up captaining the women’s team for this very reason… the lack of funding, lack of support and proper recruiting, lack of strong coaching ability and, crucially, the lack of accountability. This year, for the first time in decades, the pieces all fell together. As a former national team player, I couldn’t help but get teary-eyed.
These are the moments and achievements that we play for. It wasn’t on the cards for myself and my former teammates but to see our current male counterparts achieve it and live the moment through them was enough to feel like we were right there in Cameroon, jumping on each other and celebrating.
That this accomplishment came through the coaching ability of a woman was, for me, the cherry on the cake. But it would be remiss to simply focus on Coach Liz Mills’ gender. She is simply one of the best coaches on the continent, period. Her analytical breakdown of games, technical understanding, determination to push coaching into the digital age and passion for African basketball is matched by very few.
But on a continent where women are still having to push against leadership stereotypes, her success with the Morans was a call to all female, aspiring coaches across the continent that, “yes, you can”.
Regardless of how Kenya performs in Rwanda’s big Afrobasket stage later this year, 2021 has already been a massive win for Kenya’s basketball community – and for the country’s sporting community in general. A decades-long spell has been broken and a blueprint for success has been laid out. From here on, we can only get better.
Story by Silalei Shani
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